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| Chai Tao (779-843 CE.) |
Waking Early One Morning
I Pen This Poem for You,
A Recluse Living in Clouds
Lan Su Chinese Garden—Portland, Oregon
You dwell in a world
of gods and mountains—
trails your heart follows quietly
the way this poet follows a line.
What use
to the frenetic human world
these landscapes you love
where switchbacks
slow everything down?
Where heights of success
and ravines of failure
mean nothing?
No hidden teachings
or practices to impart,
no special robes to wear,
how many peaks ago
did you leave
the narrow valley
of dogma
behind?
Your only ritual—
a simple bow
each morning
to sunlight shrines
haloing what's here:
gate, boulder,
pine.
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| Daniel Skach-Mills |
A 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee, Daniel Skach-Mills’s poetry is forthcoming in The Pensive Journal and Wild Roof Review. His book, The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems, was a 2012 Oregon Book Award finalist. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon, where he served for 15 years as a docent at Lan Su Chinese Garden. He was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in 2024.
Keep following the trails.❤️
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